Sanctions on Russian Federation due to invasion on Ukraine in February 2022
Posted: 22 Feb 2022, 19:48
EE2.eu Administration has decided to issue sanction on Russian Federation, due to invasion on Ukraine in February 2022.
We know that it's not the fault of people who are living in Russia, but the dictator: Vladimir Putin, who manages the country for over 22 years.
Unfortunately, such acts of aggression in Europe can not be left with no answer. People in Europe are terrorized by Russian military forces, gas price manipulations, and many, many other hostile actions.
From now on (22.02.2022, 18:00 CET) players connecting from the Russian IP addresses will see an error message and will be unable to use EE2.eu services. This includes EE2.eu website, forum, Unofficial Patch 1.5 & Language Changer installers, Unofficial Patch 1.5 Launcher and EE2.eu Multiplayer services.
Players from Russia will still be able to use EE2.eu services using the third-party VPN providers.
This decision was also made considering the number of cyber-attacks from Russian IPs. Over 95% of spam bots attacking our server were coming from Russian Federation. Spam bots are continuously trying to access the forum administrator account (using the brute force attack), and are also attacking our SSH server, scanning ports, etc. It makes our server waste resources on spam requests and puts EE2.eu on potential risk. These things were tolerated for quite a long time in order not to harm ordinary users from Russia, however now, when Russia openly attacked Ukraine and destabilizes situation in our region - the sanctions are very well needed and understandable. The main EE2.eu Server is located in Poland, which has recently been a target of cyber-attacks from Russia. Blocking requests from the entire country will help us protect our server and all EE2.eu users around the World.
The sanctions might also be extended to include Belarus, if the attack on Ukraine continue from the Belarusian border's side.
I feel sorry that ordinary players suffer sanctions directed in the Putin's regime, but please understand that we have no other reaction tools than this. I'd like remind that even wikipedia has been banned by Russia, so most of people have to use VPN services anyway in order to browse the free Internet.
Please feel free to leave your opinion / questions about the sanctions.
UPDATE 23.02.2022, 19:10:
I talked with my mom, and she was not so happy when I told her about the "sanctions". She claims that it might affect too many innocent people, who are not responsible for these things. She also said something that people already suffer enough with Putin, and "sanctions in game" only make it worse for these who just want to have fun.
As alternative I asked her what she thinks about a website where players would be allowed to "whitelist" their IP address after checking a box that they do not support Putin's regime. She said it's a bad idea, because she recently read news that 16 years old was sentenced with prison for killing something in a video game. I checked, and it's true: https://www.euronews.com/next/2022/02/1 ... -minecraft
She said that people could be put at risk if they had to "agree" to something they can not openly agree. I don't know how it is in reality, if people are really punished for disagreeing with the "ruling party" in Russia, but I agree that it's better not to risk.
Anyway, I was rethinking the whole "sanctions" idea, and I decided that at the current stage it's better to revert them. I still think that the sanctions idea had it's positive sides (bringing attention to the problem), but I can not mentally suffer that innocent people, unrelated to Putin's regime are also being punished.
So in summary, since 23.02.2022 ~18:30, the sanctions have been removed.
There is still a possibility that if the conflict escalates, the sanctions will be resumed, with a possibility to manually "whitelist" the IP address. After all, people in Ukraine are also terrified by the war, and many of them will probably lose their lives in case of the war. So these things can not be left unanswered.
At the moment, I think it will be a better idea to simply post EE2 News condemning Russia's actions.
UPDATE 24.02.2022, 08:40:
The sanctions have been resumed after the Russian invasion on Ukraine today at night. The sanctions now also include Belarus which allows its border to be used to attack Ukraine.
Unfortunately, such acts of aggression need an answer from all possible services and the World. For now Russian players need to use VPN in order to use EE2.eu services.
UPDATE 27.02.2022, 04:50:
As I promised, the Russian and Belarusian players can now remove the sanctions by filling a declaration at the specially prepared website:
https://ee2.eu/sanctions/
The texts might be improved in the near future. I just didn't want to delay the release of this web page.
I hope all the good Russian players, who are against the war, will find this web page helpful.
The sanctions removal system might be changed a bit in the future (e.g. periodical expiration of the declaration in order to protect players privacy in case of dynamic IP address changes), but at the moment it's not required.
Russian players who make a declaration and then insult Ukrainian players, or post pro-war messages on our chat services will be awarded with bans identified by the hardware IDs of their computer. Discussion about the war is still acceptable as long as it doesn't offend the invaded country. Due to aggression started by Russian Federation, we do not guarantee the same protection for Russian players. Russian players who will use our chat services need to be aware that they might be the target of hateful messages from players living in different countries around the World. Unfortunately it won't be something that can be controlled.
We know that it's not the fault of people who are living in Russia, but the dictator: Vladimir Putin, who manages the country for over 22 years.
Unfortunately, such acts of aggression in Europe can not be left with no answer. People in Europe are terrorized by Russian military forces, gas price manipulations, and many, many other hostile actions.
From now on (22.02.2022, 18:00 CET) players connecting from the Russian IP addresses will see an error message and will be unable to use EE2.eu services. This includes EE2.eu website, forum, Unofficial Patch 1.5 & Language Changer installers, Unofficial Patch 1.5 Launcher and EE2.eu Multiplayer services.
Players from Russia will still be able to use EE2.eu services using the third-party VPN providers.
This decision was also made considering the number of cyber-attacks from Russian IPs. Over 95% of spam bots attacking our server were coming from Russian Federation. Spam bots are continuously trying to access the forum administrator account (using the brute force attack), and are also attacking our SSH server, scanning ports, etc. It makes our server waste resources on spam requests and puts EE2.eu on potential risk. These things were tolerated for quite a long time in order not to harm ordinary users from Russia, however now, when Russia openly attacked Ukraine and destabilizes situation in our region - the sanctions are very well needed and understandable. The main EE2.eu Server is located in Poland, which has recently been a target of cyber-attacks from Russia. Blocking requests from the entire country will help us protect our server and all EE2.eu users around the World.
The sanctions might also be extended to include Belarus, if the attack on Ukraine continue from the Belarusian border's side.
I feel sorry that ordinary players suffer sanctions directed in the Putin's regime, but please understand that we have no other reaction tools than this. I'd like remind that even wikipedia has been banned by Russia, so most of people have to use VPN services anyway in order to browse the free Internet.
Please feel free to leave your opinion / questions about the sanctions.
UPDATE 23.02.2022, 19:10:
I talked with my mom, and she was not so happy when I told her about the "sanctions". She claims that it might affect too many innocent people, who are not responsible for these things. She also said something that people already suffer enough with Putin, and "sanctions in game" only make it worse for these who just want to have fun.
As alternative I asked her what she thinks about a website where players would be allowed to "whitelist" their IP address after checking a box that they do not support Putin's regime. She said it's a bad idea, because she recently read news that 16 years old was sentenced with prison for killing something in a video game. I checked, and it's true: https://www.euronews.com/next/2022/02/1 ... -minecraft
She said that people could be put at risk if they had to "agree" to something they can not openly agree. I don't know how it is in reality, if people are really punished for disagreeing with the "ruling party" in Russia, but I agree that it's better not to risk.
Anyway, I was rethinking the whole "sanctions" idea, and I decided that at the current stage it's better to revert them. I still think that the sanctions idea had it's positive sides (bringing attention to the problem), but I can not mentally suffer that innocent people, unrelated to Putin's regime are also being punished.
So in summary, since 23.02.2022 ~18:30, the sanctions have been removed.
There is still a possibility that if the conflict escalates, the sanctions will be resumed, with a possibility to manually "whitelist" the IP address. After all, people in Ukraine are also terrified by the war, and many of them will probably lose their lives in case of the war. So these things can not be left unanswered.
At the moment, I think it will be a better idea to simply post EE2 News condemning Russia's actions.
UPDATE 24.02.2022, 08:40:
The sanctions have been resumed after the Russian invasion on Ukraine today at night. The sanctions now also include Belarus which allows its border to be used to attack Ukraine.
Unfortunately, such acts of aggression need an answer from all possible services and the World. For now Russian players need to use VPN in order to use EE2.eu services.
UPDATE 27.02.2022, 04:50:
As I promised, the Russian and Belarusian players can now remove the sanctions by filling a declaration at the specially prepared website:
https://ee2.eu/sanctions/
The texts might be improved in the near future. I just didn't want to delay the release of this web page.
I hope all the good Russian players, who are against the war, will find this web page helpful.
The sanctions removal system might be changed a bit in the future (e.g. periodical expiration of the declaration in order to protect players privacy in case of dynamic IP address changes), but at the moment it's not required.
Russian players who make a declaration and then insult Ukrainian players, or post pro-war messages on our chat services will be awarded with bans identified by the hardware IDs of their computer. Discussion about the war is still acceptable as long as it doesn't offend the invaded country. Due to aggression started by Russian Federation, we do not guarantee the same protection for Russian players. Russian players who will use our chat services need to be aware that they might be the target of hateful messages from players living in different countries around the World. Unfortunately it won't be something that can be controlled.